Mad Lads

Don't know if I buy a lot of it, but an interesting cover story from Business Work claiming that girls are kicking boys' butts in many measures of success.

One telling indicator: "For 350 years, men outnumbered women on college campuses. Now, in every state, every income bracket, every racial and ethnic group, and most industrialized Western nations, women reign…"

(via Fark.)

Comments

[Plutarck]

Do note that because women are statistically more likely to excel in areas that are likely to be neccessary in the future, it does not logically follow that men will thus switch roles. In fact the present generation seems to be moving towards a far more likely distribution, where-in the majority of women AND men are present in the work force.

Unless there is some dramatic change, there will still be far more highly skilled/educated jobs available than there will be people to fill them. Thus even if the first choice were women, there simply wouldn't be enough of them - there wouldn't even be enough people with women and men combined.

Further, another mistake is made in some reasoning here. Men are disproportionally better at physical strength and physics (and such), whereas women are not nearly so disproportionally better at reasoning, interpersonal relations, politics, diplomacy, and communication - and in fact all these are far more easily improved through education than are physical strength and such, which are much more innate in physical structure and beyond trivial attempts at alteration. In fact, these are areas where both men AND women are relatively equivalent in evolutionary neccessity, and in modern testing at adult age and similar education one gender does not do particularly better in these tasks.

Furthermore, another ability is forgotten - leadership. Most leaders in history, so far as I am aware, were men, though it would seem to require more speculation than I care for to say whether or not this is due to cultural force or biological makeup.

One more thing is forgotten, and I think it the most important - intelligence. As a point of fact, the average intelligence of men and women tend to be about the same (it really makes no sense for it to be otherwise - intelligence is as valuable hunting as it is child-rearing, or in any other endevour for that matter). From the point of view of IQ, neither sex - on average - is the smarter one. However, there is one very noteworthy thing here, and that is variance. In short, women are more likely to be neither exceptionally stupid, nor exceptionally smart, than men. At the same time, men are far more likely to be outright idiots than women, though they are also far more likely to be absolutely brilliant. This seems to be the cause of the fact that it sure seems like all the horrible idiots and villians throughout history (and in the present day) are men...yet the vast majority of top-of-the-line revolutionary inventors, scientists, artists, politicians, and generals were also men. It also jives with common experience (at least mine); it often seems to me that of the people I meet, almost all of the truly brilliant are men, while the absolute most putrid idiots I ever had the misfortune to run into were men as well. Men are, statistically, much less consistent.

As such, it is most likely that the lion's share of the best-of-the-best people in the future will be men; directly below them will likely be a relatively equal distribution of men and women, with perhaps a slightly higher percentage being women. And at the absolute bottom of the heap, men will, predicatably, reign supreme - as we always have, it seems.

And I for one...couldn't care less. These over-achievers better just invent some really good machines so the rest of us barely have to do any work at all - so then we can kill them, give the machines our jobs, and spend the rest of the time doing exciting things like watching HoloVision and praising our beloved Big Brother and Sister.

[Amanda]

"I wonder if there is also a biologically-based skill set that men have that gives them an edge here"

I've wondered this myself. Apparently there have been studies done charting the verbal/spatial skills of women in reference to their hormone levels. Women score better on verbal tests when their estorgen levels are high and better on spatial tests when it is low.

As for the argument that women will hold the reigns in the future I say this: there are levels and levels of power. We are becoming an increasingly technogy driven/technical society. Math is everywhere, and women have historically (and currently) opted for career paths which skimp on treatments of mathematics and "hard" sciences. This will need to change in the future--if only for a woman to prevent herself from being severly disadvantaged both in the job market and in her ability to process information.

[SM]

I dont know if anybody has noticed this but it used to be argued that women were good at "soft" disciplines ie the humanities and were never going to be particularly good at science. But when i was in engineering school a little under 50 % of the students in my class were women AKA chicks - and they generally did better than most guys though not me of course. This was true of almost every course. Guys used to complain that women spent too much time hitting the books and were not much into personality enhancing extra-curricular pursuits - beer & porn.
Bring on the nanotech endo-skeletons & germline engineering quickly.

[Plutarck]

Oh, I should note, to clear up any ambiguety - my above comment had approximately nothing to do with the article. I was just addressing the comments in general 🙂

For those, like me, who haven't read the article, I suggest you do so - I'm doing so now, and it's quite interesting, though I've heard the same sort of thing from FredOnEverything.net, in that schools and their teacheresses seem to be developing in such a way as to be remarkably hostile to males.

[PLC]

Have any of you every actually had to work with women? Women seemed to be pretty good at talking in the hallways, bring cookies to work, and setting up useless meetings. When the work needs to get done - it's all men.

Look at the distribution of labor - men do the construction, engineering, science, development, etc. Real work. Women go into Human Resources, Marketing, retail. This is not sexist, it is fact.

If you think women are going to be running things in the future, you're living in a fantasy world. I doubt if you will ever see a significant number of women who concieve and build a successful enterprise. Perhaps some will ride down a dying dinosaur, but they ain't gonna be building anything.

[Jim]

Actually I just thought of something else to add on the 'women in technology' issue - I read an interesting article on women in engineering in one of the engineering mags I get for free at my job. A dean of an engineering school confided that he frequently gets B or better GPA female students who drop out because they think they can't handle it - while he has to tell many below C GPA males that they should consider some other career path. The theory seems to be that the hard technology field seems to lack the sort of positive social feedback for progress and doing a good job that is present in the 'soft' sciences. Because genetics or society or both, men aren't usually as good as women at giving out kudos - and technogeek men are even worse than average at this, to be sure. For a man in this line of study he is satisfied he's doing a good job when he gets a good grade, but for a woman she apparently doesn't think she's doing well unless told so. This does make some sense based on personal experience but I don't have any studies or whatever to back it up. It also fits the theory that men and women learn differently and can't be successfully taught in a manner that doesn't account for or accomodate these differences.

Plutark, do you know where I can find those studies about the variance? I kind of think that you'd tend to expect the opposite (more intelligence variation in women) because from the standpoint of sexual selection there are a lot of men out there who seem to not be as concerned with status and intelligence among women so much as whether they have big hooters or not. There was a short article in Liberty magazine a few months back exploring that theme vis a vis the plight of 'high achievement' women who were unmarried or childless, largely because men don't really care about their (the woman's) career success in the same way that women care about mens'. I've also noted (as well as some other people I know) that really attractive women are rarely smart or funny because they don't have to be to gain social status. Other than that, some good points by the way.

[Plutarck]

Jim:

On variance...hm, the difficulty in finding a reference. I know the word is bell curve, but I can't recall if the book The Bell Curve dealt with this subject, or if it just dealt with race and such.

I _think_ it dealt with this, so I'd point that as a good place to look first.

Maybe it's just me, but for some reason this seems similar to men being more likely to take risks and have overall lower valuations of security than women. Might be entirely unrelated, though.

[Jough]

Unfortunately, I think PLC's statements reflect reality better than most of what we read on this subject. Is it brain chemistry, or is it the Barbie doll, holly-hobby ovens, and make-up kits?

Somewhat off-topic, but I've noticed female managers/supervisors often treat other women like dog crap compared to how they treat male subordinates.

[Anonymous]

"but I've noticed female managers/supervisors often treat other women like dog crap compared to how they treat male subordinates."

Does this surprise you? Oftentimes an animal faces the harshest competition from its own kind.

They are competing for dominance in the same niche.

[omnibus bill]

A nice fact to chew on:

Among all students presently enrolled in college, over 57% are female; a little over 42% are male.

Think we still need "bring your daughter to work day" to help improve the poor gals' self-esteem? Looks to me like they are doing just fine.

[PLC]

An interesting aside to this topic is that if you happen to be a woman who is technically proficient, good at math, and introverted (ie, you work "like a man" in a male-dominated field), you are guaranteed success in life.

My wife works in bio-informatics (computer science + statistics + genetics) and her company can't stop falling over themselves to make her happy (including 15% and 25% raise the last two years). Of course, she is the only non-male employee in a group of about 60 scientists.

[PLC]

omnibus bill - the problem is that, for the most part, those women are studying things like sociology, anthropology, women's studies, english, art history, etc. These degrees might be fine and dandy, but they don't really apply to any job outside of becoming a college professor.

I knew a lot of extremely intelligent women who went to top schools, choose the wrong course of study and graduated to a job as a bank teller or a telemarketer. So, their parents' spent $100,000 over four years so that they could make $10 an hour working alongside high school grads...

[Parker]

Interesting commentary - but there is an underlying theme here that bugs me.

There seems to be a trend to perform and publicize studies of this nature, implicitly presenting the results in the form 'x is better than y!'.

There is insight to be gained from such work - but summarizing the results so ruthlessly tends to make people think the general tendency should be applied to all particular cases.

This, I think, has an unfortunate effect on society - replacing personal analysis with vaguely remembered anecdote.

I want information that can help me make better judgements, and not presented in a fashion that attempts to make my judgements for me.

[Perry]

I think that one of the main drivers behind the male vs. female achievement gap has to do with competitiveness. The very skillsets that allow women to be more caring and sympathetic also don't let them be as hard and ruthless and competitive as many men are on their way to the top.

This isn't a bad thing, but I'd bet that there are many more men out there willing to sacrifice all just to 'win' and become top dog, whereas that drive isn't as important to most women. So I think that while many glass ceilings are still there to be broken, most top positions at firms will still be held by men.

[Anonymous]

Perry,

Maybe different people define "winning" differently.

[Joe Dokes]

As a male and history teacher at a middle school, I can safely say that the article is quite accurate.

Ironically, as I sit in staff meetings and discuss raising student achievement, whenever the topic of gender equity comes up it is ALWAYS aimed at improving female participation. When I point out that on every single measure of academic peroformance girls do better, I am told what a dinosaur I am and to basically shut up.

We as a society have stiffed boys over the last quarter century. At every school I have taught at, the focus has been on creating cooperative, rather than competitive environments. A couple of years ago, I began a class competition, that tested basic historical facts and created rankings of high achievers, I was told by the principal to pull it down, ironically at that time the best performers were boys.

Regards Joe

[David]

Off-topic: please stop using the phrase "skill sets!" Just use the word SKILLS, darnit!

[Perry]

Maybe different people define "winning" differently.

Yes, but that's exactly my point. If women tend to define winning more as having healthy work and life relationships/families/many other myriad life choices besides money and power, while men tend to define winning as 'I gotta be the CEO and make my first mil by the age of 35', then there really as much of an achievement gap as there is a difference in achievement expectations.

and fine, no more use of the term, 'skillsets'.

[Anonymous]

Perry,

I'm actually reconsidering the wording of my post. There is probably actually a high correlation between the set of circumstances (wealth, social success, successful offspring) both men and women would say indicate "winning". Women and men have just specialized in different areas to bring about a "meta-win".

A woman can marry a male "winner" and so procure for herself the benefits associated with risk taking behavior while a man can marry a female winner and procure for himself the benefits associated with her specialization.

[SM]

Exactly how do the people here who say that women are "wired differently" etc explain the large number of asian & indian women in science and technology ?
I am not arguing that women are not "wired differently" but that does not explain it all. My wife is in school getting a biotech degree and almost everyone in her class is female; perdominantly asian/indian.

[Anonymous]

SM,

The thing to remember is that career choice is not a static equilibrium. Optimal survival strategies change over time. Those factors which made childrearing and domestic duties the optimal survival strategy for millions of women are diminishing.

Of course we're seeing groups of women (and men, explosion in career choice is a relatively new phenomena) enter into non-traditional fields. Hundreds of new niches have sprung up in the last century or so. People move into them and the equilibrium shifts.

[DS]

how much does that have to do with male discrimination

[The Mountain Goat]

I read "The War Against Boys", and it basically documents what Joe Dokes writes above. Additionally, boys who shoot up schools are not considered the exception; instead every boy is considered a little killer.

Boys are being taught in a manner that emasculates them. The U.K. has figured out the puzzle, and has started to use boy appropriate teaching.

[JDM]

Public school (public daycare, really) can be considered a war against children in general. Perhaps the most important battle of the left in its war against mankind. Boys are probably lucky to be spared the attention of their unionized babysitters as much as possible.

[Anonymous]

In regards to Joe trying to create competition in classroom. My Jr High history teacher used Classroom Jeapardy every friday to review material learned, and create competiveness. I thought it was great, and did better at history that I ever had up to then, or have since then. However, I hear that teacher was made to stop a couple years later due to "making some studends feel inferior" by what they didn't know..... That is basically what the mother of a girl had supposedly said to the school board. But if membory serves, us boys did always do better in that particular class than the girls.....

[Andrew Lynch]

And the point of this and many other, um, socially relevant studies would be? New ways to incite divisiveness? New fodder for theoretically sexy but practically useless discourse? A break from racial studies? Or studies about fat American kids? Something to talk about that isn't a poll?

[Brad S]

In most developed nations, this generation is the first or second generation in which society has not been primarily agrarian or industrial. In an agrarian or industrial society, men clearly have an advantage over women in terms of being the primary wage-earner due to their superior physical strength. However, physical strength doesn't matter in today's society. Today, we live in an information / administrative society. The most important skills in terms of being a good wage earner are ability to collect and process information efficiently and ability to work with and lead diverse teams of people. In these areas, women have a clear advantage over men (especially in their ability to work with and communicate effectively with others on a team). Therefore, I would argue that women will gradually become the breadwinners of the future, and "trophy husbands" will become a much more common thing. Feminism will become less and less relevant, as it becomes men who start to complain about being "oppressed". Heck, a new political activist movement entitled "masculism" may even emerge.

[Bobo]

I'd say it's more European tradition (and possibly due to some of the crops) that Western agriculture is dominated by men. Go to most Asian farms, and you'll see women and children out there as well. In a lot of Native American societies and traditional African societies, women were responsible for most of the farming (in Africa there is often a twist were men farm cash crops and thus have economic control even though women really support the family).

[Jim]

An interesting speculation, 'Trophy Husbands'... I agree that statistically women have superiority at skill sets that are advantageous over men. However I think the incentives men and women have are different based on our tribal evolution and those incentives will not change.

It has been argued, I can't remember by whom, that modern society is not geared properly to women's evolutionary heritage. Women as a group in tribal societies worked together to raise the children and gather and farm in the tribal settlement while the men left in hunting parties. Thus they had the advantage of productive work and social interaction, and being critical to the economic survival of the tribe, yet were also able to be close to their children at all times. (Women are better at multitasking than men, which makes sense in this context of having to be doing multiple tasks with the constant interuption that is typical when you have young children around). Men, on the other hand, leave the tribe behind to hunt and return later with the kill. Men are good at visual/spacial relations and focusing on one task, both skills essential to hunting. For men in modern society, not much has changed. We leave the home and go to work all day. However, for women they must now choose either to be close to their children all the time and not have the social/economic benefits of work, or choose to leave their children behind for part of the day in order to work outside the home. It is not a 'natural' choice for most women. Thus you see many women re-thinking their situation and choosing to find jobs that allow them to work part time or out of the house. This is still a net economic cost however compared to what you can earn with full time employment outside of the home.

I know culture and society also influence this greatly, and every individual is different (some men may make better full time guardians for their children than some women) but I still think in general you will always see a disproportion between men and women with regards to choosing between career and home.

[joe]

Jim,

"...but I still think in general you will always see a disproportion between men and women with regards to choosing between career and home."

The problem with this is that you assume the definition and function of "home" and "career" are static. Ironically, it may technological and economic advancement that may bring us back to a more "natural" state in which home and work spaces are physically and conceptually closer.

[dude]

Women are better at the sort of soft politics that get you ahead in school, the corporate environment, etc. By "soft" I mean politics that aren't based on coercion and force.

Basically, they'll be running everything in another generation or two. Men will still be needed for various geek endevors (where the peculiar male ability to "focus like a laser beam" that must be a relic from our hunting past gives us a leg up) and to pleasure women and provide them with children. I am ready for this brave new world.

[joe]

I always hear women say they have to work twice as hard to get the same recognition. I think this is becoming less and less true. But if many women, taking it to heart, do actually work twice as hard in an increasingly fair economy, then they're bound to achieve a great deal.

[Jim]

Good point, Joe. In fact the revolution has already begun here, and the fact that my wife is able to work from home is part of the bluring of these distinctions. I am in fact planning to leave work early today so I can catch up on some research at home.

That said, I still think the incentives are different. Men in general just do not seem to have as much patience with children. Also, if you are working at home so you can spend more time with your kids, you are by definition spending less time working. So overall, I think these benefits still come with an economic cost. A worthwhile cost for many people, but still a cost. And I think by and large women will be choosing this trade off more commonly than men.

I did feel the article was well written and made some very good points, especially about how men and women learn differently and the fact that the new 'female focus' may be harming boys. It's been said in the past that girls initially do better at math and science but fall behind later due in part to greater attention spent on boys (I'm just now seeing ads on TV playing up this as well in an attempt to get more girls involved in technology fields) but maybe that's reversing. However boys are still dominating in those areas even now. I wonder if there is also a biologically-based skill set that men have that gives them an edge here (that focus think maybe)..

[Archipelago Elf creature]

As a general rule, women will never marry men who are less productive than they are. To say the imperitive of women having to marry male role models is based on biological whittling is a bit of a cop out...

Men now want to want to be flanked by a mother figure as they knew it, and women want to be flanked by a father figure as they knew it. The problem is that these figures don't exist in the modern time.

[Lefty]

Purely from my own experience with ex-wives, I would have to say they lack a sense of humor.

[Jon B.]

Boy did Lefty hit the nail on the head.

Men have a better sense of humor than women do. (I've taken statistics and critical thinking during the same semester, so I understand the absurdity of saying on the one hand that statistical analysis is meaningful while on the other hand generalizations are not.)

Screw analysis, here is my personal research. I spent almost 10 years studying computers when it was a profession populated by 99+% men, then I went back to school and studied nursing which is 95+% women. I had to give up a lot of what a 70's-80's era education had taught me about the sexes. Women are different than men, an idea that only someone who has never raised children could postulate without either being oblivious, fanatical, or programmed. While the idea that women and men are different is an idea coming back into vogue, it was the same as saying that black people are dumber than whites at the time.

Among the things I have learned in the world of "girl like me" is that women have less of a sense of humor than men have, as a whole. It makes sense to me. Men use humor as a defense mechanism when they don't have the physical means to deflect an attack from another man (boy, really.) It makes perfect sense to me. Girls don't have that ability socially, since getting a group of girls laughing isn't as disarming as getting a group of boys laughing at you (socially). Why not? The ultimate expression of male competition is "Let's go outside". After going outside (and beating the hell out of each other, in case you don't get it) the two guys will come back inside and have a beer together. If men had developed any differently, perpetual warfare would have been the only possible result. Humor is a way to avoid conflict and yet save face. Women (not having violence as a natural conclusion to any unresolved conflict) are more prone to take the status penalty of humor and then plot the time when the status could be recovered. Women see humor at their expense as an attack, men as a way of avoiding conflict.

[David Moynihan]

There was a study (Canuck, I'm afraid), which indicated something like 60% of school libraries in that nation had not a single title in stock which boys would be interested in reading. Can't be that different down below.

Link to study:
http://www.ldac-taac.ca/english/research/boysread.htm

That said: I'm not so sure being ignored by most curriculumns is such a bad thing (Ritalin sucks, but then again, where I went, we all self-medicated). That one line in there, about girls being better able to endure lousy educational structures, rings true.

Personally, I dropped out of high school in 10th grade, went to college three years later, missed nothing, worked overseas for a time, and currently, at the tender age of 30, run my own business (fourth year overall; second year of profit). At no point was my income below that of my high school classmates (upper middle class school).

I know there are like numerous agencies out there for women to go and get assistance when it comes to running a business, but they're so indoctrinated into a structured lifestyle (stay in school, get good grades, do what you're told, don't rock the boat), that they can only get in on the entrepreneur thing with assistance, handholding, meetings, seminars, training sessions, etc. (wondrous activities that together have not a damned thing to do with running a business, or, I got the same 100k line of credit just by filling in a few forms at a Bank of America... hope they gave ya free coffee!)

Women are only 1/3rd of the small business owners in America, as compared with, say, 60% in most third-world nations (and frontier states like Alaska or Wyoming)--though you'll read this as a dominant, growing trend (and they usually cite things like home-based "headhunters" or real estate agents as, you know, businesswomen.)

My particular enterprise, based on industry statistics, should be competing against dozens of female-run businesses, yet women are virtually nonexistent (outside the corporate setting where they predominate). Maybe they're still sitting in at meetings.

Ritalin is a serious issue, but is our society so much better off if bright young men don't see college having all that much to offer?

[Nate]

I don't mean to overgeneralize, but I'm working on an advanced degree in computer engineering. My University has a large number of foreign students, the majority of them from China and India. However, almost all are males. From the entire department, the (small) female population is almost entirely made up of foreign students. Leap forward into the research domain and from my own experience, I have seen very, very, very few publications from females.

A friend of mine from my undergrad days had a heavy interest in Myers-Briggs personality typing. The engineering disciplines and the sciences are heavily dominated by NT personality types, which are again biased towards males. As others have asked, I too wonder if this is biological differentiation or cultural influences.

I do not doubt the male/female ratios that are in favor of women on college campuses. A casual stroll around my own campus makes the obvious...but I do fear, yes fear, that most of the female students are pursuing education that does not have a large impact on producing wealth.
If women are to run the future, this condition needs to change radically and more women need advanced studies in economics, science, engineering, and business.

[area code]

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